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The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game
The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game
The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game
Audiobook7 hours

The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game

Written by Mary Pilon

Narrated by Chris Sorensen

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

The Monopolists reveals the unknown story of how Monopoly came into existence, the reinvention of its history by Parker Brothers and multiple media outlets, the lost female originator of the game, and one man's lifelong obsession to tell the true story about the game's questionable origins. Most think it was invented by an unemployed Pennsylvanian who sold his game to Parker Brothers during the Great Depression in 1935 and lived happily-and richly-ever after. That story, however, is not exactly true. Ralph Anspach, a professor fighting to sell his Anti-Monopoly board game decades later, unearthed the real story, which traces back to Abraham Lincoln, the Quakers, and a forgotten feminist named Lizzie Magie who invented her nearly identical Landlord's Game more than thirty years before Parker Brothers sold their version of Monopoly. Her game-underpinned by morals that were the exact opposite of what Monopoly represents today-was embraced by a constellation of left-wingers from the Progressive Era through the Great Depression, including members of Franklin Roosevelt's famed Brain Trust. A fascinating social history of corporate greed that illuminates the cutthroat nature of American business over the last century, The Monopolists reads like the best detective fiction, told through Monopoly's real-life winners and losers.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 17, 2015
ISBN9781490680989
Author

Mary Pilon

Mary Pilon is the New York Times bestselling author of The Monopolists and The Kevin Show. She cowrote and cohosted the audio series Twisted: The True Story of Larry Nassar and the Women Who Took Him Down. She previously covered sports at The New York Times and business at The Wall Street Journal. She is a story producer on BS High, HBO’s documentary about the Bishop Sycamore High School football scandal. Find more of her work at MaryPilon.com.

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Reviews for The Monopolists

Rating: 3.7441859767441863 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

43 ratings3 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I had no idea behind the origins, evolution, and scandal of this beloved game. It was fascinating to learn more about such a pop culture item. Who doesn't have at least one edition of this board game in their house. I thought the book could have been shortened because the legal aspects towards the end really dragged on - but other than that I really enjoyed getting a behind the scenes look at such an "ordinary" item. When the game was first created at the turn of the twentieth century - the creator called it the landlords game and it came with two sets of rules. On one set of rules the goal was to spread the wealth because only when everyone has the same opportunities does someone wine. The other set of rules was the monopoly version that we all know and loved. The goal was to make people see how bad monopolies are - winning because one person has accumulated all the wealth shows how vile monopolies are... right? Wrong. The "bad" set of rules became an underground sensation. People were making their own canvas boards and adding their own distinctive names and rules. The set we know and love got all the place names from Atlantic City where is took off. Decades passed and a man named Darrow claimed it was his own and sold it to Parker Brothers where it became an international sensation. Only it clearly wasn't his - having been played in pockets all over the country for three decades. The Monopolists gives the inside scoop on all these incidents and ends with the fight over the Anti-Monopoly game - an attempt to go back to the creator's anti-monopolist roots. Fascinating - but a bit long at parts.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    For anyone that loves Monopoly or inventing.

    Also, spoiler: MONOPOLY WAS INVENTED BY A BOSS ASS BITCH!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When I started reading The Monopolists, I hadn't read the cover blurb in a while, so I was confused when we started with Ralph's story and then suddenly the next chapter was talking about Lizzie Magie's invention of The Landlord Game (the first precursor to Monopoly). While this was partly my fault for forgetting the blurb, ideally the text should offer enough explanation to stand on its own. Aside from this rough beginning though, the story was fantastic. I loved learning about all the people involved in the creation of Monopoly as we know it. The pictures of the board as it evolved were one of my favorite parts of the book (clearly legible even in ebook format). I also enjoyed a small digression to talk about people who played Monopoly competitively. I only played Monopoly when I was little, so learning about the amount of strategizing that can go into the game was eye-opening.

    Ralph's David-and-Goliath battle against Parker Brothers added some much needed drama to a story that sometimes started to seem like a genealogy as so-and-so taught so-and-so to play the game who taught someone else, etc. I think had the history of Monopoly been interwoven with Ralph's investigation of the games history, instead of being told in its entirety first, this could have been a five star read for me. I find that narrative nonfiction that is structured around the author or someone else's investigation can add immediacy to an otherwise sometimes dry history. Even so, most of the story kept me fascinated and I truly enjoyed learning the history of this well-known game. I'd recommend the book to fans of narrative nonfiction and, of course, to any fans of the game.

    This review was originally posted on Doing Dewey.